


Five Time Aiba Masaki Nearly Died (But Didn't)

by littlealex



Category: Arashi (Band), Johnny's Entertainment
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-12 07:20:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlealex/pseuds/littlealex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not that Aiba's a daredevil, just that sometimes he could be more careful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Time Aiba Masaki Nearly Died (But Didn't)

1.  
"I don't think you should eat that, Aiba, it doesn't look quite right..."

"It's okay! It's been in the fridge, right?"

Later, Nino is sitting in the ambulance next to an extremely dehydrated Aiba, who has spent a good few hours throwing up the entire contents of his body. He glares at the patient, who has an IV poked into a large vein in his arm, and feels no sympathy.

2.  
The shower in Aiba's apartment is almost his favorite place in the world - next to his bed and his couch, which tie for first place. He has a bath, but it's not the same as his shower. His shower is encased in glass, which has strategic frosted stripes across it, and the shower head is the most beautiful thing he has ever experienced in his life. He counts himself lucky to use it every day of his life, and more often than not he is late not from hitting the snooze button but from spending too much time in the shower.

One day, Aiba is enjoying his shower as he usually does, taking his time to wash himself and let the soap suds crawl all over his body, when he manages to miscalculate a step. He doesn't know how it happens, but the following couple of seconds happen in slow-motion: his balance is thrown off and he falls backwards, one foot slipping out from beneath him and then the other. His arms reach out to try to grab something but his fingers slip away from the faucets and his back slams hard into the glass door. The door shatters around his weight and he crashes to the tiled floor of his bathroom, landing on his back amongst tiny splinters of glass.

Time starts moving properly again once he lands. He knows he didn't hit his head, but he can feel the skin on his back prickled with glass, a fiery but dull ache where he landed on his ass, and a sharp pain in the back of his thigh that tells him that something is definitely wrong there. The water's still running, his shower head continuing blithely, completely unaffected by the catastrophe, and Aiba can't work out whether it's comforting or disturbing. He ponders the situation for a moment before he concedes that there are probably more pressing matters at hand.

In the end, all he ends up with are a few stitches on his thigh and a bruised tailbone which stops him from dancing for a couple of weeks (though the pain doesn't really subside for nearly six), along with dotted scabs (a couple of which turn into scars) across his back. He counts himself lucky.

3.  
When Sho asks about the weird dents in his thigh, the smile drops off of Aiba's face. He doesn't frown, but the general happy energy that keeps Aiba's face taut in a perpetual smile is instantly sapped, and his face falls like a child who has been told that Santa doesn't exist. He doesn't say anything for a moment, stalling by examining the dents as though he's never seen them before. They're not obvious (this is the first time Sho's noticed them after years of seeing Aiba in various states of undress), but surely Aiba knew about them. Still, his reaction makes Sho feels bad for asking the question instantly.

"I was attacked by a dog when I was two," Aiba says after a while, still staring at the dents - there's only two of them, little indents of skin and muscle and it makes sense that they're old wounds now that Sho thinks about it. "My mother had looked away for a second when she guesses a stray came up and I wanted to pat it. Next thing she knows, I was bowled over and it bit my leg, punctured the skin through my trousers, and she beat it away with her handbag. She took me to the hospital and I had to get a rabies shot and x-rays and blood tests and things... it was a little traumatic. I was scared of dogs until my dad got a puppy for my brother when I was seven or so. It was the sweetest, gentlest little thing, but even so it took half a year before I could really be around it."

Sho blinked. "And now you go hang out with lions and tigers in Africa? How -" He cut himself off. It didn't make any sense.

"Those are cats, silly. Besides, I didn't _die_ , did I?"

4.  
Aiba loves to ride his bike. He does it more often than anyone he knows, even though he has a great car, and he doesn't see why other people in the agency don't take up the habit. Everyone complains about getting recognized on the streets or the subway, but Aiba doesn't get that on his bike. He whizzes past people and occasionally he gets seen when he's waiting for the lights to change, but most people don't stop in the middle of crossing the road.

The one problem with riding a bike in the city, though, is the cars. Aiba's a safe driver, but he's a terrible bicyclist. He rides as fast as his legs will take him on the right gear setting, weaving in and out of traffic and across busy intersections between people crossing to get places faster than anyone else. It's partly the adrenaline rush, but mostly his competitive side coming out to play with traffic lights and cars. He treats the road like a fast-paced video game, making risk assessments in the blink of an eye and watching everything in his field of vision for potential attacks.

Of course, he's not beyond the occasional close call or scrape with a car. He's bumped tyres with taxis and nearly run over pedestrians, but there's only one time he was truly scared for his life.

The car came from nowhere, of course. It was a street he knew well, so he wasn't paying attention to the blind driveway that nobody ever used. Aiba doesn't blame the driver, but he doesn't blame himself; as far as he's concerned, they both weren't watching the street properly. The car came out of the driveway fast, and Aiba was riding too close to the sidewalk. The collision was instant and disastrous. Aiba flew off his bike and landed on his side on the pavement a few feet away. The pain was sharp and overwhelming and it felt difficult to breathe - so difficult that he passed out just as the driver of the car came over to see what had happened.

Aiba woke up in the hospital, where the driver of the other car and - inexplicably - Ohno was waiting for him.

"I was the only one without work today," Ohno said by way of explanation. "Your mother's on her way."

Aiba left the hospital with a mild case of fractured ribs and had sustained a concussion despite wearing a helmet. He'd also sprained his left hand somehow in the fall, but it was the best he could really hope for. For the month that it took him to recover from the fractured ribs, he didn't hear the end of it from anyone - his mother, his manager, the rest of Arashi - and sometimes he wondered if it would have been better to have had a more serious accident.

5.  
"Aiba, if you're going to use the hairdryer make sure you don't plug it into the marked socket," Jun calls from the other room. Aiba frowns, hairdryer in his hands, and looks at the pair of electrical sockets at the sink. They're both marked - one of them with a purple dot, one with a yellow dot. Nothing is plugged into their of them, so he has no idea which one to use. He decides that the yellow dot must be the okay one, because yellow is a nice, happy color so it can't signify anything bad.

He's wrong, though, and he feels a definite zap run through his veins before everything goes black.

When he wakes up, he's on Jun's bed, with Jun frantically on the phone while also holding Aiba's wrist to check his pulse. "Oh my god, he's awake," Jun practically screeches into the phone as his eyes meet Aiba's, "okay, water and keep him awake, got it. Bye." Jun hangs up the phone and glares at Aiba. "You idiot, I told you not to put it in the marked socket."

Aiba's brain is still a little fuzzy but he remembers the two dots. "But I thought yellow was a nice color."

Jun looks pained. "You're lucky you're not dead."

**Author's Note:**

> Written for spurious in a drabble prompt post on my journal. Ideas shamelessly stolen from Supernatural 3x11 episode _Mystery Spot_. But because this is Arashi and not Supernatural, Aiba doesn't really die.


End file.
